His Highness The Aga Khan, who became the spiritual leader of the world’s millions of Ismaili Muslims at age 20 as a Harvard undergraduate and who poured a material empire built on billions of dollars in tithes into building homes, hospitals and schools in developing countries, died 4 February, 2025, at Lisbon. He was 88.
His Aga Khan Foundation and the Ismaili religious community announced on their websites that His Highness Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV and 49th hereditary imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, died on Tuesday in Portugal surrounded by his family. They said an announcement on his successor would come later.
Considered by his followers to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV was a student when his grandfather passed over his playboy father as his successor to lead the diaspora of Shia Ismaili Muslims, saying his followers should be led by a young man “who has been brought up in the midst of the new age.”
Over decades, the Aga Khan evolved into a business magnate and a philanthropist, moving between the spiritual and the worldly and mixing them with ease.
Treated as a head of state, the Aga Khan was given the title of “His Highness” by HM Queen Elizabeth II in July 1957, two weeks after his grandfather the Aga Khan III unexpectedly made him heir to the family’s 1,300-year dynasty as leader of the Ismaili Muslim sect.
He became the Aga Khan IV on Oct. 19, 1957, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the spot where his grandfather once had his weight equalled in diamonds in gifts from his followers.
He had left Harvard to be at his ailing grandfather’s side, and returned to school 18 months later with an entourage and a deep sense of responsibility.
“I was an undergraduate who knew what his work for the rest of his life was going to be,” he said in a 2012 interview with Vanity Fair magazine. “I don’t think anyone in my situation would have been prepared.”
Accounts differ as to the date and place of Prince Karim Aga Khan’s birth. According to “Who’s Who in France,” he was born 13 December, 1936, at Creux-de-Genthod, near Geneva, Switzerland.
He was the son of Prince Ali Salman Shah (1911-1960), and his first wife, the Hon Joan Barbara Yarde-Buller (1908-1997), former wife of Thomas Loel Evelyn Bulkeley Guinness (1906-88), and eldest daughter of the 3rd Baron Churston (1873-1930), and his first wife the actress Jessie Smither (who used the stage name Denise Orme) (1884-1960). Jessie was later wife of the 7th Duke of Leinster (1892-1976). His mother's third husband was the 2nd Viscount Camrose (1909-1995).
His Highness had an elder half-brother, Patrick Benjamin Guinness (born 10 March, 1931), who married in 1955, the German aristocrat Dolores Maria Agatha Wilhelmine Luise Gräfin von Fürstenberg (born 31 July, 1936), and he was killed in a motor accident, 5 Oct, 1965.
His Highness had numerous lines of descent from peerage families, and a royal descent from King Edward III.
The Aga Khan married firstly, in 1969 (divorced 1995), the model Sarah Frances Croker Poole (born 28 January, 1940), former wife of Lord James Charles Crichton-Stuart (1935-82), a younger son of the 4th Marquess of Bute (1907-1956), and his wife Lady Eileen Beatrice Forbes (1912-93), and daughter of Lieutenant-Col Arthur Edward Croker Poole (1900-80), and his wife the former Jean Margaret Balfour Watson (who died 2001). His Highness the Aga Khan married 2ndly, 30 May, 1998 (div 2014) Gabriele Renate Thyssen (Princess Inaara Aga Khan) (born 1 April, 1963), former wife of Karl-Emich Nikolaus Friedrich Hermann Erbprinz zu Leiningen (born 12 June, 1952), and daughter of Helmut Friedhelm Homey, and his wife Renate Kerkhoff.
The Aga Khan leaves issue by his first wife, known as the Begum Salimah Aga Khan, two sons, Rahim (born 12 Oct, 1971), and Hussain (born 10 Apr, 1974), and a daughter, Zahra (born 18 Sept, 1970), and a son by his second wife, Aly Muhammad (born 7 March, 2000).
The eldest son, Rahim, married the American model Kendra Spears (now Princess Salwa Aga Khan) in 2013, and they have two sons.
The Aga Khan's daughter, Zahra, married in 1997 (div 2005), (Jonathan) Mark Boyden (born 1961), son of a Dorset farmer, and has issue, a son, Iliyan Boyden (born 8 May, 2002), and a daughter, Sara Boyden (born 14 Nov, 2000).
=-
